http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/28/540012363/fda-proposes-cutting-nicotine-amounts-in-cigarettes

Bill Chappell

Nicotine will now be at the center of the Food and Drug Administration’s effort to regulate tobacco, the agency said, announcing that it will aim to lower the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to a level that will help curb addiction.

It would be the first time in the agency’s history that it has sought to regulate the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

“The overwhelming amount of death and disease attributable to tobacco is caused by addiction to cigarettes — the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Friday. “Unless we change course, 5.6 million young people alive today will die prematurely later in life from tobacco use.”

The plan had an immediate effect on the stock market.

“It’s a real blow to big tobacco, there’s no question about that,” NPR’s Rob Stein said on Morning Edition, “and tobacco stocks have already started to fall” after Friday’s announcement.

Note;

There are >500 poisons in tobacco.  People smoke for the nicotine effect.  Reducing the nicotine in cigarettes will probably just mean more cigarettes smoked, more of those >500 poisons entering the system and accelerated smoking-related diseases in the process.  I think this is a stupid short-sighted but well intentioned act.

Dr. Raymond Oenbrink